The other day I came across this pearl of wisdom:
It got me thinking. What is it that I want and look for? Well, in no particular order:
- a lifelong partner, a.k.a the last boyfriend
- an awesome job
- loads of money, enough to bathe in!
- a place that feels like home
But in reality, do I need any of that?
- no partner in sight at the moment, but it is what it is
- I got a job. Is it awesome? It pays the bills. Few of us have the luxury to do awesome every day and call it a job
- certainly don’t have enough to bathe in, but I get by
- home is where the heart is
So I don’t need any of this. What do I find then, when I stop searching? I believe I find calm and peace of mind…
That is something I didn’t have when I came back to Europe. I didn’t want to be back, I didn’t plan to be back. I remember standing in my sister’s bathroom with my cellphone pressed to my ear whispering: ‘Yes, I miss you too’. You guessed it, to no other than my husband, who I left on the other side of the Atlantic. Thankfully, it was not easy to drop everything and run back into his arms, the ocean being… you know, the ocean.
The first good thing that happened to me then, I finished my university and got my degree. The second good thing happened when I got a job, and it turned out I quite liked it. The third good thing happened when he walked into my office and his smile lit up the room.
The smile, together with soft blue eyes and ‘touch me’ blond hair belonged to a young man. He came for a job interview at the company that I worked for, and being part of the HR team I had the right to be as nosy as I needed to be, to see how suitable he was for the job opening (in reality trying to find out as much as possible about the guy who’s been sitting in front of me for 5 min but I was already madly in love with him). ‘And why did you leave the States?’ – I asked when he mentioned he’d been living there for a while. ‘Oh, you know, I got married, but things didn’t quite work out’.
I did know! Two young souls who thought they had it all, and who came back right where they started. I kept looking into his eyes, his smile, his Zoo York T-shirt (reminded me of NYC) and felt this was meant to be.
There were coffee breaks, kisses, shared meals, basketball games, trips to the seaside and meetings abroad a few years later.
But I was feeling restless. I was yearning for adventures. My country was no longer enough for me. My job no longer interested me. I started looking for summer placements abroad, landed one in Greece and took a flight to Athens.